Citizens National Bank Searches For System Solution

Citizens home(a) swan Searches For dodging SolutionIn the training corpse world, before a caper hind end be solved, it frontmost must be decently defined. Members of the organization must agree that a problem actu all toldy exists and that it is serious. The problem must be investigated so that it can be better understood. future(a) comes a period of devising choice origins, then champion of evaluating to each one alternative and selecting the best solution. The final detail is one of implementing the solution, in which a detailed design for the solution is specified, translated into a physical proscribedline, tested, introduced to the organization, and further cracking as it is utilize over time.Unfortunately, the same mis incurs happen once again and again when organizations decide to embrace a in the raw discipline clay each as a solution to a problem or coiffe of problems the organization perceives it is facing, or a guidance realization that the organiz ation should take advantage of tonicfound opport unit of measurementies to answer more effectively. These mistakes occur repeatedly ascribable to the lack of a thorough dodge abstract which includes a feasibleness examine to determine whether each proposed solution is feasible, or achievable, from a financial, technical, and organisational stand occlusive.The grandeur of stunnedline analysis, nurture carryments, and feasibility psychoanalyze come of their advantages in determining whether each alternative solution is a good investment, whether the engineering science need for the transcription is visible(prenominal) and can be handled by the firms instruction clays staff, and whether the organization is capable of accommodating the changes introduced by the body.Customer affinity management systems ar very popular tuition systems nowadays and discombobulate been hailed as a agency for companies to find, influence, and retain clients, even though industry exp erts advert failure rates for CRM rollouts of up to 70 percent. Thats a disastrously postgraduate figure for initiatives that typi battle cryy cost hundreds of thousandsor even millionsof dollars. Most a good deal the complexity of CRM systems can turn deployments into expensive, time-consuming mistakes when companies embrace a nab CRM parcel from hearty bashn vendors wish SAP, or Seibel while they need all low-cost, faint-to-implement CRM softw be with many common CRM features like necessitate generation and management, betray trailing, and customer dungeon management.Citizens guinea pig hope searches for a system solution pull up stakes be my main discussion in this topic study which I think depicts a wide-eyed example of organizations that underestimate the importance of a thorough assessment to business processes and a plenteous analysis to the projected schooling system to define the requirements of the new system, unattached alternatives, and equivale nce eightfold endurance criteria in order to choose the best available solution which capable of playacting the required tasks, satisfy examplers needs, and compatible with the organizations legacy systems.Singleton Needs a CRM PackageThe initial problem that Mark Singleton was exhausting to resolve is the carrying into action of a CRM system to plus gross gross revenue by raising the number of contacts affinity pious platitudeers were reservation and improving the tracking of these activities so that the bank could learn more from them. Also Singleton wanted a CRM system that places a great value on the person-to-person interactions betwixt his relationship bankers and their customers and doesnt interfere with those interactions and diminishes the relationship bankers rapport with customers. (Lauden, 2010)In the problem-solving process which is especially expensive when we need to sort new systems as a solution to a problem or set of problems the organization percei ves it is facing. The problem in this lesson came from the management realization that the organization should take advantage of new opportunities to perform more effectively, but they didnt apply the four stairs of problem solving. In the problem-solving process to system twist, we would need to take the following four steps (Lauden, 2010)(1) Define and understand the problem.(2) Develop alternative solutions.(3) Choose the best solution.(4) weapon the solution.Citizens depicted object Bank CEO Mark Singleton attaind the first step with an great performance in be and understanding the problem for which they need to build a new system but he failed dramatically in applying the rest of the steps required by the problem-solving process to build a new system. Mr. Singleton did not devise, develop or try several alternative solutions before opting for a new CRM system to solve the problem of typography and manual of arms work up and replace it with a new information system to a utomate some of the bankers tasks. Because he did not develop alternative solutions, he couldnt choose the best solution which led to a failed implementation at the first time.Figure Problem Solving ProcessSource Lauden, prudence Information SystemsNew System Implementation Its touchable and Intangible BenefitsOrganizationally, Citizens National Bank of Texas is a private, full-service bank with headquarters in Waxahachie, Texas, and 200 employees that has operated separately since 1868. Citizens National Bank relies on personal, retail, and commercial customers and serves businesses and consumers in Ellis County and other nearby counties, primarily in communities with populations of 25,000 or less. (Lauden, 2010)Citizen National bank operates heavily manual and count on paper system in which sometimes a salesperson that left wing Citizens National could take records of customer interaction with him or her, leaving the bank with no information to maintain the relationship. The paper system also created too very much information for Singleton and his branch jitneys to process effectively. So that the old paper system cannot support the large number of new customers and the annual grow at a rate of 12 percent. (Lauden, 2010)A major part of Citizen Nationals strategy for continuing growth was to implement customer relationship management (CRM) softw ar. The CRM strategy targeted the banks cardinal main contact points with customers the banks call eye and its sales force. The objectives of a solution for Citizens National Bank would be to reduce the amount of time, effort, and errors in the tracking of activities made by relationship bankers and to increase sales by raising the number of contacts relationship bankers were making and improving the tracking of these activities so that the bank could learn more from them. (Lauden, 2010)Tangible BenefitsIncreased productiveness Using a CRM system give alter relationship bankers to improve their tracking ac tivities with customers, which in turn increase their productivity and give them efficacy to serve more customers.Lower operational be using electronic records will substantially reduce papers utilize and guides in cost saving.Reduced workforce this is will be the result of increasing bankers productivity to serve more customers, which in turn will considerably reduce the workforce required to handle the projected increase in sales.Reduced rate of growth in expensesReduced expertness costs due to paper reduction, and workforce reduction.Intangible Benefits meliorate organizational planning and tractableness because the paper system created too much information for Singleton and his branch managers to process effectively. The CRM system will give them efficient information to shake off effective decisions.Improved decision making having accurate information under executives and managers control will dramatically enhance the decision making.Improved operations The CRM system w ill enable the bank to approve citation and loan applications more quickly.Improved asset utilization and improved imaging control.More information available in a timely manner. deepen employee goodwill because under the old paper system, a salesperson that left Citizens National could take records of customer interaction with him or her, leaving the bank with no information to maintain the relationship.Increased job satisfaction among employees. superior client satisfaction nothing will satisfy the customers more than getting a quick approvals and smooth transactions.Better corporate image this is will result automatically from an increase in job satisfaction among employees and a higher client satisfaction.Why didnt the implementation of the Siebel CRM solution work outI believe that the implementation of the Siebel CRM solution didnt work out for Citizens National because it was not the best solution that applies or fits into the defined problem it didnt work out because it w as not a result of a thorough endurance process that went through precise evaluation for multiple alternatives or solutions. The implementation failed for many factors, I will classify these factors in terms of organization, technology, and slew issuesOrganization the improvement of Citizens National toward nearly all business functions, from tracking customer leads to generating reports about them, was very basic. The Siebel software was manifestly too well-off in features. (Lauden, 2010)From the start, Citizens National had trouble getting the software to fit its quite a straightforward, basic customer-lead tracking and reporting needs.With Siebel, we were spending way too much time turning off capabilities that we didnt need, Singleton explains. An example of functionality that didnt fit Citizens Nationals business mould was Siebels capability for setting up customer support cases. While some large corporations may want to set up a support case with detailed complaint-trac king and resolution functions, the small bank had no use for it. Service complaints that come in to Citizens National are handled on the slip by its call center. For service inquiries that require a follow-up, much(prenominal) as a customer asking about the reordering of checks, the call-center representative schedules an action by sending an e-mail to the employee who handles check orders. (Bartholomew, 2007)People Employees free-base the software to be too complicated. They were surprised to learn, for example, that the system did not automatically convey potential business opportunities for customers on their records. Furthermore, bankers were not able to view multiple relationships between a customer and the bank on the same screen. The spare navigation was confusing and inefficient. (Lauden, 2010)The relationship bankers were the key employees the system was intended to be of value to them, and, in turn, fork up value to the bank. However, they found no bonus in the Sieb el environment because their compensation was based on sales, and sales had generate harder to gather in.Citizens Nationals bankers found the system difficult to navigate. For instance, the banking representatives couldnt understand why an opportunity to ready a loan to a particular customer wasnt listed under the customers record. You devour to assign that opportunity to that person, explains Doug Furney, president and CEO of The Small Business Solution. If you dont bring in those relationships when entering the data, the opportunity wont appear under that customers record. Not eitherone slowly grasped this concept. (Bartholomew, 2007)Furney says the way the screens were laid out in Siebel, Citizens bankers had to flip back and aside between the various screens to identify different relationships that customers had with the bank. Understanding these relationships in the system was very confusing to their bankers, he says.As a result, the banks top sales representatives, who werent eager to change the way they did their work to fit the needs of the software, found Siebels learning curve too steep to negotiate. Citizens Nationals 16 relationship bankers never got over the ease-of-use problems that Siebel presented, Furney says. (Bartholomew, 2007)Technology Citizens National experienced compatibility issues between the database formats in Siebel and those used by the banks totality banking application, developed by Kirchman. As a result, the two systems had difficulty exchanging information properly. The bank was forced to spend a profound amount of time fixing such compatibility issues, which negatively impacted its ability to serve customers. (Lauden, 2010)Citizens National also had to deal with a raft of customization issues, often stemming from the differences between databases. Furney worked to integrate Siebel with Citizens Nationals core banking application. The bank uses banking software from Kirchman, whose vertical systems are used by numero us small and medium-size banks to process and track customers deposits, loans and practice accounts. Trying to get these two systems to talk was a challenge, he says. (Bartholomew, 2007) wholeness basic difference was the way the core banking application set up its customer data palm. The Kirchman system did not have individual fields for both the customers first and sustain look ups, choosing instead to include the full name in a single field. By contrast, in Siebel, the customers first and last name each had a data field. Thats the kind of thing we ran into when we act to marry data from these two different systems, Furney says. This kind of integration takes time, and customers dont defecate how much time is required. (Bartholomew, 2007)Was QuickBase a better solution for Citizens NationalIn my perspective, QuickBase was the best alternative solution that meets the requirements of Citizens National Bank for a new IT system that is an balmy to use, capable of doing some tra cking activities, and store the interactions between relationship bankers and their customers and doesnt interfere with those interactions and diminish the relationship bankers rapport with customers.QuickBase was designed for organizing, tracking, and manduction information among team members in the workplace while encouraging fortify by notifying workers via automated e-mails of updated files, new task assignments, and approaching deadlines. Because QuickBase was not programmed as a unique(predicate) business application, businesses could modify its database structure to meet specific business functions. (Lauden, 2010)One reason some small and medium-size companies, as well as groups deep down larger ones, are adopting QuickBase is its tractableness. Intended not sound for customer management, QuickBase-which is actually more of an easily modified database than a fully fledged business application-can be harnessed for other business tasks. For example, Procter Gamble uses the system to track technology projects. Because its easy to use, runs online via any browser and doesnt require an I.T. overlord to set up, the hosted application is finding its way into all kinds of businesses. (Bartholomew, 2007)There are many factors suggest that the bank ended up with the right approach and the right choice of product, some of these factors areThe Citizens National staffs were able to make changes to QuickBase themselves, so the costs of ownership and maintenance fees were much lower.QuickBase offered Citizens National flexibility that it did not have previously. Because the system was Web-based, the relationship bankers were able to use it anyplace that they had ingress to a browser.Relationship bankers and management received daily updated access to all interactions and transactions, enabling them to track business in a way that was never possible previously.For the first time, Citizens National was able to completely track sales opportunities and, as Singl eton said, where we lost business, so we know where we need to make those extra 10 or 15 sales calls.Also important to the success of QuickBase at Citizens National was Furneys ability to integrate the system with the Kirchman core banking application. Furney configured QuickBase to upload new account information to the core system every night via an XML interface.For example, a banking representative can click on a commercial customers file and immediate deliberate all the contacts that have been made with that customer by bank staff, any actions that were taken on the customers behalf, and the end result. Citizens National bank representatives use it to check on customers to see if there has been a follow-up call to a contact, whether a voice-mail pass was left with the customer, who the salesperson was and the status of the contact. Its been an invaluable tool for us to withhold track of our customers, Singleton adds. (Bartholomew, 2007)A Complete CRM big money is Not for Ev eryone sedulousness experts describe failure rates for CRM rollouts of up to 70 percent. Thats a disastrously high figure for initiatives that typically cost hundreds of thousandsor even millionsof dollars. For smaller businesses or for departments within large companies, even successful implementation at that cost is out of the question. Anecdotally theres a fairly high failure rate attributed to CRM implementations, says Jocelyn Young, program manager for CRM services for IDC. (Desmond, 2010)Customer relationship management systems have been hailed as a way for companies to find, influence, and retain customers. Packages from companies like Onyx, Pivotal, and Siebel go far beyond simple contact and sales managementthey link sales, marketing, and customer support operations into a single, sticky chain. But the complexity of CRM systems can turn deployments into expensive, time-consuming mistakes. some companies need low-cost, easy-to-implement CRM software. Fortunately, affordab le packages have finally matured. (Desmond, 2010)Figure CRM SystemsAll for one, one for all CRM deployments can be expensive because they touch nearly every part of a business. By driving everything from marketing campaigns to call center operations to inventory management through a single experience base, companies are able to fine-tune customer interactions at every point of contact.Source http//pcworld.about.comJerry Norman, president of Market Answers, a CRM consultancy in Austin, Texas, says the broad translation of CRM is part of the problem. If you ask 100 people on the street what CRM is, you are going to get 100 answers. The executives know that they need CRM, but they dont know what they are getting. (Desmond, 2010)One way to sidestep the issue, says Norman, is to narrow the focus of the CRM effort. Lower-cost CRM products such as Microsoft BCentral Customer Manager, SalesForce.com, and SalesLogix provide common CRM features like lead generation and management, deal trac king, and customer support management. These packages can be installed on a partnerships servers or hosted by an application service provider. But while a Siebel deployment can cost several hundred thousand dollars, a package like SalesLogix can be had for less than $50,000 for 20 exploitersa relative pittance by CRM standards. (Desmond, 2010)So I believe that, organizations that would benefit from using Siebel CRM package are the large corporations which use it to connect multiple departments inside the firm like sales, marketing, and customer support operations which will link them into a single, cohesive chain. Example for such organizations is Verizon Wireless, we will examine in the next constituent of this case study how Siebel CRM divine serviceed Verizon to achieve its business objectives and gets a competitive advantage. This case study is taken from www.Oracle.comVerizon Business Delivers New Sales and Support Tools and Improves System Performance by 35%Verizon Busines s Basking Ridge, NJwww.verizonbusiness.comVerizon Business, a unit of Verizon Communications, is a global leader in communication theory and IT solutions. With one of the worlds most(prenominal) connected internet protocol networks, Verizon Business delivers communications, IT, security, and network solutions to many of the largest businesses and governments.Industry Annual RevenueCommunications US$93.5 billionEmployees32,000Our work with Accenture to recruit our Oracle systems has improved system performance significantly. In a fresh survey, 84% of users said performance was faster or much faster. Plus, our sales and support staff have new tools to improve productivity and customer service, which ultimately drives customer retention and revenue. Rob Moore, Director Verizon BusinessChallenges pass sales and support staff with new tools to provide end users with a better experience, supporting customer retention, which is vital in todays competitive communications industryReact to market demands and growing competition from new and tralatitious players in the market with more flexible setImprove system performance and lower maintenance costsStrengthen reporting and enable what if scenario testingSolutionWorked with Accenture to upgrade to Oracles Siebel CRM 8.0 and Oracle Business Intelligence try Edition, taking advantage of evolving technology to support a range of customer-facing communications industry business processesGained new sales and support tools-for tasks ranging from quoting to contact management-to help 15,000 users better serve 250,000 large and midsize business customersImproved pricing flexibility with new, dynamic pricing features that allow the company to introduce new pricing or customer retention offers on demand, instead of requiring code changes and a separate release, which previously took several monthsProvided sales and support staff with a new, easy-to-use interface that supports best practices and improves productivityExpand ed reporting functionality to drive greater visibilityUpgraded hardware and middleware and enabled a service-oriented architecture (SOA) to extend integration crosswise the enterprise and further consolidate systemsLowered support costs and positioned the company for long-term cost savings by reducing customizationsImproved system performance by 35% and accelerated processes by up to 12 hours-vital for a system that processes about 120 quotes, 104 contracts, and 340 opportunities dailyImproved user satisfaction, with 84% noting faster performanceCompleted the upgrade within a short, eight-month timelineCould Citizens National have made a better choice?I think everyone would agree with me that Citizens National Bank could have made a better choice from the beginning if its management followed the required rules and procedures of building a new information system. Citizens National Bank could have made a better choice if its CEO Singleton analyzed the size and scope of the needed syst em and tried to find answers for the following questionsWhat system will provide us with a genuine business benefits?How can the firm accommodate to the changes introduced by the new system solution?What alternative approaches are available for the needed system solution?In the information system world, building a new information system in order to save an existing problem in the business operations requires a deep system analysis. Before a problem can be solved, it first must be properly defined. Members of the organization must agree that a problem actually exists and that it is serious. The problem must be investigated so that it can be better understood. Next comes a period of devising alternative solutions, then one of evaluating each alternative and selecting the best solution. The final stage is one of implementing the solution, in which a detailed design for the solution is specified, translated into a physical system, tested, introduced to the organization, and further re fined as it is used over time. (Lauden, 2010) deathTransforming business processes into an automated information system and taking advantage of new opportunities available through the rapid development of information systems and technologies is never an easy task and should not be taken for granted. In order to achieve high results and gain the expected returns from the investment in new information system, organizations should follow the recommended procedures in building a new system from defining the system requirements, determining its scope, to choosing the best available solution that is capable of performing the required tasks without going through a series of complicated screens that lead to the frustration of end-users.The systems analysis lays out the most likely paths to follow granted the nature of the problem. Some possible solutions do not require an information system solution but instead call for an adjustment in management, additional training, or refinement of exi sting organizational procedures. Some, however, do require modifications to the firms existing information systems or an entirely new information system.sometimes the lack of a thorough system analysis and feasibility study make you get lost in the forest of a complete business application that fits only large corporations and that is exactly what happened to Citizen National Bank in its search for CRM system. While the approach of Citizens National toward nearly all business functions, from tracking customer leads to generating reports about them, was very basic, they chose Siebel CRM system that was simply too rich in features which employees found it to be too complicated.Citizen National Bank could have prevented the demise of five hundred thousand dollars in a learning lesson if they conducted a thorough system evaluation and selection process from the outset in which they would find that the required system was an easy to use system that doesnt exceed a thousand dollar in its implementation cost.